Deputy made an argument in favor of single time zone in Kazakhstan

Tengrinews.kz - Mazhilis deputy Erkin Abil spoke in favor of maintaining a single time zone in Kazakhstan. As an argument, the Kostanay representative presented a map showing that all regions of the country fall within the UTC+5 time zone. He shared this on his Facebook page, citing Nasha Gazeta.

"The time zone is determined as follows: starting from the Greenwich meridian, imaginary lines are drawn from north to south every 15 degrees, forming bands 15 degrees wide. For example, UTC+5 covers longitudes from 67 to 82 degrees east. Major cities in Kazakhstan, such as Almaty (76°), Astana (71°), Shymkent (70°), and others, are located in the geographical time zone of UTC+5," the deputy explained.

Time zone map
He added that the petition for "adding two hours" or the UTC+7 time zone aligns with the time in Thailand, which is much further east than Kazakhstan.

"About 'getting dark early': as of today, the length of day in Astana is nine hours (it will be even shorter in December). Meanwhile, we are awake for 16 hours (24 hours minus eight hours of sleep). No matter how you adjust the clock, we will spend seven hours in darkness. Those who say, 'Let’s enjoy daylight in the evening,' aren’t mentioning that it would also mean daylight would start two hours later in the morning. Today, sunrise is at 7:20 a.m.; with UTC+7, dawn would only be at 9:20 a.m., and in December, only at 10 a.m. Not using lights in the evening only to use them in the morning—great logic!" argued the deputy.

As the publication reminded, Erkin Abil was initially against moving even the Kostanay region to its natural time zone. However, after becoming a deputy, he was the one who submitted a proposal to shift the entire country to a single time zone, a proposal that gained support. When asked by an NG journalist why he changed his stance, Abil responded, "I was persuaded."
As a reminder: on the night of February 29 to March 1, Kazakhstan switched to a single time zone. Three months later, on June 7, a petition to cancel the time change gathered the required 50,000 signatures.
In August, the Ministry of Trade and Integration announced the final decision regarding the time zone petition. At that time, Minister Arman Shakkaliyev stated that based on substantiated scientific international studies on the positive effects of standard time zones and the absence of evidence of negative health impacts, a decision was made to deny the petition.